The Relationship Between Cognitive Impairments and Sleep Quality Measures in Persistent Insomnia Disorder.

Study Objectives: Persistent insomnia disorder (pID) is linked to neurocognitive decline and increased risk of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) in later life. However, research in this field often utilizes self-reported sleep quality data - which may be biased by sleep misperception - or uses extensive neurocognitive test batteries - which are often not feasible in clinical settings. This study therefore aims to assess whether a simple screening tool could uncover a specific pattern of cognitive changes in pID patients, and whether these relate to objective aspect(s) of sleep quality. Methods: Neurocognitive performance (Montreal Cognitive Assessment; MoCA), anxiety/depression severity, and subjective sleep quality (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index: PSQI; Insomnia Severity Index: ISI) data were collected from 22 middle-aged pID patients and 22 good-sleepers. Patients underwent overnight polysomnography. Results: Compared to good-sleepers, patients had lower overall cognitive performance (average: 24.6 versus 26.3 points, Mann-Whitney U = 136.5, p = <0.006), with deficits in clock drawing and verbal abstraction. In patients, poorer overall cognitive performance correlated with reduced subjective sleep quality (PSQI: r(42) = -0.47, p = 0.001; and ISI: r(42) = -0.43, p = 0.004), reduced objective sleep quality (lower sleep efficiency: r(20) = 0.59, p = 0.004 and less REM-sleep: r(20) = 0.52, p = 0.013; and increased sleep latency: r(20) = -0.57, p = 0.005 and time awake: r(20) = -0.59, p = 0.004). Cognitive performance was not related to anxiety/depression scores. Conclusion: Using a simple neurocognitive screening tool, we found that pID patients showed cognitive deficiencies that related to both subjective/self-reported and objective/polysomnographic measures of sleep quality. Furthermore, these cognitive changes resembled those seen in preclinical non-amnestic AD, and thus could indicate incumbent neurodegenerative processes in pID. Interestingly, increased REM-sleep was correlated with better cognitive performance. However, whether REM-sleep is protective against neurodegeneration requires further investigation.

Dissociation between wanting and liking for coffee in heavy drinkers.

BACKGROUND: There is an ongoing discussion about the addictive strength of caffeine. According to the incentive-sensitization theory, the development and the maintenance of drug addiction is the result of a selective sensitization of brain regions that are relevant for wanting without a corresponding increase in liking. Dissociations of wanting and liking have been observed with a wide range of drugs in animals. For human subjects, results are inconclusive, which is possibly due to invalid operationalizations of wanting and liking. AIM: The present study examined dissociations of wanting and liking for coffee in heavy and low/non-consumers with newly developed and validated response time-based assessment procedures for wanting and liking. METHODS: For this study 24 heavy and 32 low/non-consumers of coffee completed two versions of the Implicit-Association Test (IAT), one of which has been developed and validated recently to assess wanting for coffee, whereas the other reflects an indicator of liking for coffee. RESULTS: Results revealed a significant interaction between group (heavy vs. low/non-consumers) and IAT type (wanting vs. liking) indicating that heavy coffee drinkers differed from low/non-consumers by displaying increased wanting but not liking for coffee. INTERPRETATION: These data confirm that heavy coffee consumption is associated with strong wanting despite low liking for coffee, indicating that wanting becomes independent from liking through repeated consumption of caffeine. This dissociation provides a possible explanation for the widespread and stable consumption of caffeine-containing beverages.

Quantity matters: The frequency of deception influences automatic memory retrieval effects.

We investigated automatic retrieval of the knowledge of having lied or having told the truth to a question, depending on (a) the quality of the statement (true vs. false response) and (b) the overall proportion of (dis-)honest responses. We therefore manipulated the proportion of lies and truths being told in an oral interview. Automatic retrieval of this meta-knowledge was assessed with a categorisation task, where the probe words dishonest and honest had to be classified, while questions from the interview served as task-irrelevant prime stimuli. Results revealed an automatic retrieval of knowledge about having lied to a question only for participants who had told few lies in the interview, but not for those who had told many lies. No retrieval effects were obtained regarding questions that had been answered truthfully. These findings suggest a combined influence of quality and quantity of dishonest statements on automatic memory retrieval, thereby being in accordance with recent accounts of action control.

The Trust Game for Couples (TGC): A new standardized paradigm to assess trust in romantic relationships.

Trust between couples is a prerequisite for stable and satisfactory romantic relationships. However, there has been no valid research tool to assess partner-specific trust behavior including costly investments in the trustworthiness of the romantic partner. We here present a comprehensive validation of the newly developed Trust Game for Couples (TGC) by means of various self-report and implicit relationship-related measures. The TGC operationalizes trust by measuring an individual's willingness to invest his or her own financial resources in pro-relationship attitudes of their romantic partner (collected by dichotomous responses to relationship-relevant items, e.g., answering yes to "I am absolutely sure that I love my partner"). Thirty-five healthy couples between 20 and 34 years completed the TGC in an interactive (both partners present), but anonymous setting (no information on the partner's responses revealed). Trust, as measured by the TGC, correlates positively with self-reported trust, satisfaction, and felt closeness in the relationship, but not with general interpersonal trust, confirming both its convergent and discriminant validity. In addition to explicit criteria for construct validity, implicit measures of partner valence and confidence explained variance in the TGC, demonstrating that it constitutes an economical measure of implicit and explicit ingredients of trust between couples. In sum, the TGC provides a novel, specific behavioral tool for a sensitive assessment of trust in dyadic relationships with potential for numerous research fields.

How to Remember Something You Didn't Say.

When individuals suppress secret information, they should keep this omission in mind to not let this information slip out in future situations. Following recent findings about automatic memory retrieval of outright lies, we hypothesized that suppression tendencies are also automatically retrieved from memory when being confronted with a question to which one has previously omitted secret information. In an online study, participants first had to withhold information about a fictitious love affair during a simulated chat with their relationship partner. To assess automatic suppression tendencies, we developed an indirect response time measure wherein a key that had previously been established to indicate suppression now had to be pressed in response to word stimuli that were presented in a specific color. We found implicit suppression tendencies for words that had been withheld during the interview if they were presented following the prime that involved the question which the secret answer referred to. The question primes or the secret information alone did not elicit a suppression tendency, indicating that suppression responses were automatically retrieved from memory after re-encountering the combination of the question and the critical answer. The results are discussed regarding the theoretical implications for automatic memory processes.

Predicting Behavior With Implicit Measures: Disillusioning Findings, Reasonable Explanations, and Sophisticated Solutions.

Two decades ago, the introduction of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) sparked enthusiastic reactions. With implicit measures like the IAT, researchers hoped to finally be able to bridge the gap between self-reported attitudes on one hand and behavior on the other. Twenty years of research and several meta-analyses later, however, we have to conclude that neither the IAT nor its derivatives have fulfilled these expectations. Their predictive value for behavioral criteria is weak and their incremental validity over and above self-report measures is negligible. In our review, we present an overview of explanations for these unsatisfactory findings and delineate promising ways forward. Over the years, several reasons for the IAT's weak predictive validity have been proposed. They point to four potentially problematic features: First, the IAT is by no means a pure measure of individual differences in associations but suffers from extraneous influences like recoding. Hence, the predictive validity of IAT-scores should not be confused with the predictive validity of associations. Second, with the IAT, we usually aim to measure evaluation ("liking") instead of motivation ("wanting"). Yet, behavior might be determined much more often by the latter than the former. Third, the IAT focuses on measuring associations instead of propositional beliefs and thus taps into a construct that might be too unspecific to account for behavior. Finally, studies on predictive validity are often characterized by a mismatch between predictor and criterion (e.g., while behavior is highly context-specific, the IAT usually takes into account neither the situation nor the domain). Recent research, however, also revealed advances addressing each of these problems, namely (1) procedural and analytical advances to control for recoding in the IAT, (2) measurement procedures to assess implicit wanting, (3) measurement procedures to assess implicit beliefs, and (4) approaches to increase the fit between implicit measures and behavioral criteria (e.g., by incorporating contextual information). Implicit measures like the IAT hold an enormous potential. In order to allow them to fulfill this potential, however, we have to refine our understanding of these measures, and we should incorporate recent conceptual and methodological advancements. This review provides specific recommendations on how to do so.

And Remember the Truth That Once Was Spoken.

Whenever individuals reveal personally relevant information to a stranger, they have to remember their self-disclosure for future interactions. Relying on instance-based theories of automaticity, we hypothesized that knowledge about having revealed private information to someone unfamiliar is retrieved automatically whenever this person is encountered again. In two studies, participants were orally interviewed by two different persons and instructed to be honest to one of them and to lie to the other. This instruction was either related to the identity of the interviewers (Experiment 1) or their gender (Experiment 2). Afterward, the target words honest and dishonest had to be identified in a categorization task in which pictures of the interviewers and of unknown persons served as task-irrelevant prime stimuli. In line with the hypothesis, results revealed congruence effects, indicating faster identification of the target word honest following the picture of a person whom one had told the truth.

Implicit 'wanting' without implicit 'liking': A test of incentive-sensitization-theory in the context of smoking addiction using the wanting-implicit-association-test (W-IAT).

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: According to incentive-sensitization theory (IST), addiction is characterized by the decoupling of two subconsciously operating psychological processes 'wanting' (i.e., incentive salience) and 'liking' (i.e., sensory pleasure). The present study set out to test predictions derived from IST in the context of smoking addiction with two variants of the Implicit Association Test (IAT): a Liking-IAT and a Wanting-IAT. In line with IST, we hypothesized that smokers differ from nonsmokers with regard to 'wanting' but not 'liking'. METHODS: Smokers (n = 24) and nonsmokers (n = 24) completed a Liking-IAT (L-IAT) and a Wanting-IAT (W-IAT) to assess their implicit 'liking' and 'wanting' for smoking-cues. Smokers completed these measures twice: once immediately after smoking, and once after a 12 h period of abstinence. RESULTS: While nonsmokers exhibited negative scores on both IATs that were highly correlated, smokers' W-IAT scores were significantly more positive than and uncorrelated with their L-IAT scores. In line with the notion of chronically increased 'wanting' in addicted individuals, smokers' W-IAT scores were unaffected by the deprivation manipulation. LIMITATIONS: Results were obtained on a non-clinical sample. Compliance with abstinence instructions was assessed solely via self-report. CONCLUSION: Results obtained in this study support the assumption that nicotine addiction is linked to a dissociation of 'wanting' and 'liking' for smoking as postulated by IST. Furthermore, the study provides further evidence that the newly developed W-IAT-is a valid measure of implicit 'wanting' that can be used to examine the processes that underlie human reward seeking behavior.

Intimacy Effects on Action Regulation: Retrieval of Observationally Acquired Stimulus-Response Bindings in Romantically Involved Interaction Partners Versus Strangers.

Previous research has shown that stimulus-response (SR) binding and retrieval processes also occur when responses are only observed in another person (Giesen et al., 2014). Importantly, this effect depends on the two individuals interacting interdependently during the task (e.g., competition or cooperation). Interdependence, however, must not necessarily result from task-related demands, but can also reflect an intrinsic feature of a given relationship. The present study examines whether observing responses of one's romantic partner also produces stimulus-based retrieval of observed responses even if the task itself does not involve interdependence. Participants performed a task pairwise, either with their romantic partner or with a stranger. In a sequential prime-probe design, both participants of a pair gave color responses themselves (actors) or merely observed these (observers) in alternating fashion. As expected, stimulus-based retrieval of observationally acquired SR-bindings occurred only in romantically involved pairs; participants interacting with a stranger showed no retrieval effects. We conclude that mental representations of self and other are more closely intertwined in romantic couples, which produces automatic retrieval of observationally acquired SR binding effects even independently of the task itself.

Automatic affective responses towards the bed in patients with primary insomnia: evidence for a negativity bias.

Ruminating about sleep problems and negatively valenced thinking play a key role in the maintenance of sleep complaints in patients with insomnia. Based on associative learning principles, we hypothesized that repeated co-occurrence of negative thoughts (unconditioned stimulus) and the bedroom environment (conditioned stimulus) results in automatic negative affective responses towards the bed (conditioned response). Twenty-two insomniacs and 22 good sleepers performed a Single-Target Implicit Association Test measuring the strength of automatically triggered affective responses towards the bed. Results revealed a significant group difference, indicating a stronger negative affective response towards the bed in patients with insomnia. No correlations were found between the strength of negative affective responses towards the bed and subjective measures of sleep quality. As it might increase the stress experience further during bedtime, automatic negative responses towards the bed are likely to represent an additional factor accounting for the development and maintenance of sleep disorders and represent a potential target for therapeutic interventions.

Automatic affective-motivational regulation processes underlying supportive dyadic coping: the role of increased implicit positive attitudes toward communal goals in response to a stressed relationship partner.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: We examined the implicit affective mechanisms underlying provision of support in intimate dyads. Specifically, we hypothesized that in individuals with high relationship satisfaction, the perception that one's partner is stressed leads to increased implicit positive attitudes toward communal goals. In turn, this change in implicit attitudes facilitates supportive behavior. DESIGN AND METHODS: In two studies, we induced partner stress by instructing participants to either recall a situation where their partner was highly stressed (Study 1; N = 47 university students) or imagine a specific stressful event (excessive workload; Study 2; N = 85 university students). Subsequently, implicit attitudes toward communal goals were assessed with an Implicit Association Test. RESULTS: In both studies, we found that among participants with high relationship satisfaction partner stress increases preferences for communal goals. In addition, implicit preferences for communal goals predicted stronger inclinations to engage in supportive dyadic coping (Study 2). CONCLUSIONS: The current findings provide important insights into the implicit cognitive-affective mechanics of dyadic coping. Moreover, they can explain how people manage to avoid experiencing motivational conflicts between partner-oriented and self-oriented goals in situations characterized by high partner stress.

The implicit cognition of reciprocal exchange: automatic retrieval of positive and negative experiences with partners in a prisoner's dilemma game.

Models of reciprocity imply that cheater detection is an important prerequisite for successful social exchange. Considering the fundamental role of memory in reciprocal exchange, these theories lead to the prediction that memory for cheaters should be preferentially enhanced. Here, we examine whether information of a partner's previous behaviour in an interaction is automatically retrieved when encountering the face of a partner who previously cheated or cooperated. In two studies, participants played a sequential prisoner's dilemma game with cheaters and cooperative partners. Alternating with the game blocks, participants were asked to classify the smiling or angry facial expressions of cooperators and cheaters. Both experiments revealed congruence effects, reflecting faster identification of the smiles of cooperators (Experiments 1 and 2) and faster identification of the angry facial expressions of cheaters (Experiment 2). Our study provides evidence for the automatic retrieval of the partner's behaviour in the game, regardless of whether partners cheated or cooperated, and thus provides further evidence against the cheater detection hypothesis.

Dissociating implicit wanting from implicit liking: Development and validation of the Wanting Implicit Association Test (W-IAT).

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Wanting and liking reflect different phenomena that can be dissociated. In the present research, we develop and validate an implicit measure of wanting, the Wanting Implicit Association Test (W-IAT). To examine the validity of the W-IAT, we compared it with a standard liking IAT (L-IAT) and a semantic pseudo-wanting IAT (PW-IAT) in a context where wanting-liking dissociations have been established by previous research. Specifically, we predicted that heterosexual male participants prefer attractive female over attractive male faces in the new wanting IAT, whereas no such asymmetry should be obtained for the liking and pseudo-wanting IATs. METHODS: The rationale of the W-IAT consists in endowing one of the two attribute responses in the IAT with a truly motivational wanting quality, which allows assessment of stimulus-response compatibility effects between target stimuli and responses that are based on motivational wanting. To establish the motivational quality of the wanting response, participants are made thirsty with salty snacks before the test. During the W-IAT, participants obtain water as an action effect of the response with which they categorize drinks into the attribute category "I want". As target stimuli for which the strength of implicit wanting was to be assessed in the IAT, attractive and unattractive male and female faces had to be classified on the basis of their attractiveness. RESULTS: In the W-IAT, participants (heterosexual and male) showed a stronger implicit preference for attractive female over attractive male faces. No such difference was found for implicit liking (assessed with a standard valence IAT) and for the pseudo-wanting IAT (using only semantic labels of wanting and not wanting). LIMITATIONS: Future research is needed to validate the W-IAT in other motivational contexts besides attractive faces (e.g., addiction, craving) and to identify the elements of the procedure that are critical for establishing an implicit measure of wanting. CONCLUSION: Results suggest that the W-IAT is a valid measure of implicit wanting.

Validating the truth of propositions: behavioral and ERP indicators of truth evaluation processes.

We investigated processes of truth validation during reading. Participants responded to 'true' and 'false' probes after reading simple true or false sentences. Compatible sentence/probe combinations (true/'true', false/'false') facilitated responding compared with incompatible combinations (true/'false', false/'true'), indicating truth validation. Evidence for truth validation was obtained after inducing an evaluative mindset but not after inducing a non-evaluative mindset, using additional intermixed tasks requiring true/false decisions or sentence comparisons, respectively. Event-related potentials revealed an increased late negativity (500-1000 ms after onset of the last word of sentences) for false compared with true sentences. Paralleling behavioral results, this electroencephalographic marker only obtained in the evaluative mindset condition. Further, mere semantic mismatches between subject and object of sentences led to an elevated N400 for both mindset conditions. Taken together, our findings suggest that truth validation is a conditionally automatic process that is dependent on the current task demands and resulting mindset, whereas the processing of word meaning and semantic relations between words proceeds in an unconditionally automatic fashion.